The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1887-08-27
Che 9aiIy 8nlletin,
SATURDAY, AUG. 27, 1887.
OUR PARIS LETTER.
PARIS, July 20.

SCHOOLS. NOW Ilau the ndtlOnal
holiday is past, the Pranzini trial
over, and the new melon crop pro-
nounced good, the subject of over
pressure is receiving attention.
When q lad comes home head
achy from school, his mother at
once concludes, it is brain fever,
the result of overstudy; the profess
sor if asked, would in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred pronounce
the malady not meningitis, but ma
lingery. Doctors do agree, that in
schools, particularly for girls, the
germs Of many diseases can be
caught; but this is due, not TO over
study, but to vicious ventilation. In
such case a reduction of one.third
in the acquisition of knowledge
under such difficulties, is to be APP
proved. Pow Caro-, who has just
died, the fashionable hermit of
fashionable society, and professor
of all the social osophies, maintain
ed, that no matter how lengthy
might be the official programme Of
studies, no mind could be cram
med like Strasburg geese. As well
try to put two quarts of liquid into
a one quart measure. This implies
that the brain has not any india
rubber or bladder like capacity, for
smelling, Dominic Sampson was
"prodigious" in his learning, and
Crichton admirable" in his ency-
clopaedic requirements, and theirs
were ordinary heads. Youths have
had water on the brain but never
any cephalus from learned lumber.
There is much to be done in the
way of educational reform, in the
sense of adapting the studies of
youths, to the end they are des-
tined in life. Latin and Greek do
not help a stock broker or a soldier
much. For poet or a professor,
stuff them with Homer and Virgil,
till their eyes come up to the rolling
in fine frenzy stage. There are stu
dents who know they must inherit
wealth; that their awful dad is le-
gally debarred from cutting them
off with an angry shilling; these
youths do not stndy, but dream
when they can be men on town, sup
in fashionable taverns, smoke and
gamble in clubs, and be taught ma
thematics, and profit and loss, by
reartless c0drtisans. These are not
the martyrs of intellectual over
pressure but they are exactly the
class who people the lunatic asylums,
and add to the plethora of church
yards. They succumb not to ex-
cesses in knowledge, but to excess
of debauchery.
Senator Scherer, is perhaps the
greatest of all round literary critics
in this country. He has just deli
vered an academic verdict on the
progress aspects Of Queen Victoria's
Jubilee. He is too educated to be
otherwise than impartial and sincere
in his judgment. History, he thinks,
will not allude to her reign as it
does to the "age" of Leo X. or
Louis XIV, but to her "reign," as
it does to Elizabeth and Anne, Eng
land has made wonderful bounds in
the industrial arts and sciences
but mechanics, chemistry, &C., be-
long to a common domain, and do
not mark the individuality of any
people. As literature is ever what
is most national in a nation, the
Victorian reign will in this respect,
be pre-eminently famous. George
Eliot will mark the summit of femi-
nine talent, and Carlyle and Ruskin,
for the other sex, although Carlyle
has inflicted great injury on English
prose; and so also has Ruskin, in
painting with the pen to have style
just as at present in France.
Darwin and Spencer will be the
burning and shining philosophical
lights of the age. Like Comte, they
have banished metaphysics, that
have dragged theology in their
train, and enthroned utility, as the
sole rule for society. The evolu-
ton in political life is still greater;
England has passed from the aristo-
cratic to the democratic stage. The
laboring now share power with the
middle classes, and the suffrage is
so extended, that manhood voting
has become an inutility. The new
layer of democracy will daily be-
come more impatient of the counter
heights that compress its upward
tendencies, and Mr.. "Gladstone's re-
cent utterance of the masses against
the classes; that is, against intelli-
gence and property, is in point of
responsibility, one of the gravest
ever pronounced by statesman"
Senator Scherer believes that Eng
land is drifting into the present po-
sition of France, becoming labora-
tory for political and social expert
ments. To the honor of the Eng
lish parliament, he observes, it has
never yet favored one class at the
expense Of another. But socialism
is the colloray of democracy, and
members aim to level all inequalities.
Parliamentary blocks; the grumb-
ling parties, must tend, in England,
as well in France, to government
of the Convention type.
Sanat0r Srhernr henomns mora n